Chapter 38
War of the Worlds, seemed so off the mark. First, it assumed that aliens were in our own solar system—Mars. Then, they were strange ugly creatures that were nothing like humans—and they were the superior beings. They came here, with a plan to destroy humans. Earth was in the phase of low technology, minding its own business, and they came here unannounced and started killing humans. Mark found it hard to concentrate on a story that was so far from the realities that were happening at this time. Still, it was cool discussing it with Tess, and he really wanted to get into the Space Force. With Steve’s success, if he got the grades, he might get a chance to be pushed up to Captain much sooner than just anyone. He was motivated—more motivated than ever before.
Everything in the world had changed over the past few weeks, like the carpet had been pulled from under his feet. People were so weird. The news showed how ridiculous people could get. It was so cool seeing the video of the alien and the research girl on Steve’s ship. His brother wouldn’t try to deceive everyone on earth—he couldn’t understand why so many people said it was faked. She was definitely pretty, but why did that make it a fake? If she was ugly, would everyone believe it? Last night, the talk show, that Gramps was watching, was arguing back and forth about the beauty of the alien, and whether or not this indicated the government trying to pull a fast one. One man said that no one on earth was that pretty, and that if she was from earth, everyone would have already seen pictures of her. He reasoned that the government couldn’t have hidden such a pretty woman and then brought her out with no one knowing who she was, just for this video. The other man kept explaining that the government was using the oldest marketing technique in the book—using a beautiful person to diffuse fears and concerns. They were trying to allay the growing fears and concerns by simply using a gorgeous model to make everyone feel comfortable with the alien.
The polls showed that only twelve percent of the U.S. population believed that this video was of the actual alien, without editing enhancement. Gramps said that he didn’t know whether the video was accurate or not, but that it had backfired. People were getting angry, and were starting to show their anger in riots. He couldn’t understand what everyone was so upset about. She seemed nice, and the other girl wasn’t scared of her at all. It was weird that she sounded just like an American, and not even like a foreigner. That’s what Tess said: “Dad says that she sounds too American to be an alien. They could have at least got someone who sounded alien.” The other thing was that she looked perfectly human; not even ‘Spock ears’ or anything.
The weirdest thing of all was when they were under martial law last week. The riots were pretty bad, but at least he got a couple days off of school. Now they just had some army guys with machine guns protecting the school entrance.
“The aliens aren’t even able to fly a plane, and we are getting ourselves all worked up here. They have been up there for my whole life, and probably for thousands of years, so now we are all freaked out.” Still, in just a few years, he was getting out of here. He was going up there, and he, and Steve would be making sure everything was fine. Gramps said that it would all blow over, and people would get back to normal, eventually.
Mark closed his book, and put it in his backpack. He grabbed a handful of peanut M&M’s and walked out the door. It was brisker than he expected, so he returned back for a grey sweatshirt jacket. His mind was racing through all of these thoughts as he walked on autopilot towards school. Other kids, walking, or on bikes, or skateboards, were not an unusual sight, so they all slipped into his subconscious while he walked. It was the first morning that he had seen his breath, and that was the only thing about the physical reality that had struck him this morning.
